Booster, Joel Kim (Comedian)

Subterms

    Latest story

    88 Shares179 Views

    5 Smart Comedy Specials From Veteran Stand-Ups

    by

    Joel Kim Booster, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Fahim Anwar and Cristela Alonzo deliver strong hours ideal for summer viewing.Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.Why isn’t there a stand-up-special equivalent of a beach read? I wouldn’t recommend sunbathing with a smartphone in your hand, but it’s certainly possible. As more comics release their first specials developed in the pandemic, a new crop of hours from seasoned acts is ready to complement your summer vacation.Nikki Glaser, ‘Good Clean Filth’HBO MaxWearing thigh-high white boots and a short yellow dress, Nikki Glaser looks as much like a Bond girl as a stand-up. She’s not selling sex so much as teaching it, explicitly making the case for her own bawdy jokes filling the niche left by the pitiful job done by sex education and porn. Long adopting the persona of an older sister leveling with you, she moves closer to a modern comedy update on Dr. Ruth or even old-school women’s magazines, speaking prescriptively about everything from anal sex to how to get a man.A sly and skilled joke writer, she knows sex jokes get easy laughs, so she makes transgressive ones that look difficult to pull off. She scatters punch lines in a nimble voice that moves from gravelly deep to squeaky sweet. She delights in wordplay. Joking about her vagina, she says, “I talk about it so much that I don’t call it my privates. I call it my public.”And then there’s this gem on male rationalization for dating younger women. “There’s an epidemic of young people with old souls according to all my 40-year-old-friends.” Her hour can feel a little familiar, going over territory she has already mastered. On the other hand, there’s her closer, a silent act-out that works as a callback, an innovation and a big laugh.Bill Burr, ‘Live at Red Rocks’NetflixEarly in the pandemic, Bill Burr went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and got into it about masks. Rogan made fun of them as feminine and weak. “You’re so tough with your open nose and throat,” Burr snapped back, with an additional curse, pushing Rogan about turning a medical issue into something about manhood. “Why does it always become like that?”This viral moment revealed a divide between the two popular comics. On his podcast, Rogan sells a certain aspirational view of masculinity, while in his stand-up, Burr presents a more tortured portrait, giving anguished voice to male resentments and phobias as well as expression to their destructiveness. Along with one of the great deliveries in stand-up comedy, this complexity is what makes Burr a riveting performer.His messy, rambling, often hilarious new special baits the audience at every turn. Like Bruce Banner, Burr is worried about his temper, but it’s what we’ve come to see. And it can be the engine to some daring riffs that dig at both sides of the culture war, even though he’s more animated and funnier going after liberals. None of his many peers do this as well. No clichés about lattes and kale here. Describing a privileged white tweeter who’s virtue signaling, he imitates, typing out, “My heart breaks on my L-shaped couch.”Burr does repeat himself, and for the second special in a row, he speculates that they are running out of men to cancel. His bits are more intricately organized than his act. He closes on one that’s not as strong as the bit that came before. The emotional highlight sits awkwardly in the middle when he gets choked up describing the self-loathing of losing his temper in front of his daughter and finding that he is falling into the same mistakes that his father made. Bent down in a hunch, Burr is unexpectedly emotional, the bluster vanished and the rage transformed into tenderness. It’s a range that makes you think there’s a leading role in a great movie in his future.Fahim Anwar, ‘Hat Trick’YouTubeFahim Anwar filmed his special in three rooms at the Comedy Store.via YouTubeThe pun in the brisk, low-concept “Hat Trick,” in which the flamboyantly silly comic wears a backward cap while performing in three different rooms of the Comedy Store in Hollywood, is its only effortful part. Otherwise, the vibe is laid-back, offhanded, just another night at the club. You see introductions, shoptalk with comics and some of the drive home. In between are jokes on the most meat-and-potato stand-up subjects: dating, the pandemic, weed, porn.There’s something pleasingly comfortable about the style here, one that Anwar can pull off because he is one of the finest physical comedians working in clubs today. His act-outs rival Sebastian Maniscalco’s in grace and exceed them in goofiness, whether they are of a deer, a dancing emoji or a member of the Taliban using hand sanitizer. Each of these works nicely with the joke. The only risk is in seeming a little strained, which is why the underplayed style works so well. If you want a few laughs but don’t have time to get to the club, this will do.Cristela Alonzo, ‘Middle Classy’NetflixWhen Cristela Alonzo is telling a story, she has a specific if ambiguous look on her face that somehow generates suspense: a smiling kind of wonder that doubles as exasperation. It’s somewhere between “Can you believe this nonsense?” and “What a world.” You want to find out where she lands.It’s part of the fun of her first special in five years, whose highlights are sensitively observed jokes explaining the transition from growing up poor to finding some success. Keep an eye out for a virtuoso story about her first trip to the gynecologist. Her joyful comedy has a dark side, which shows around the edges of jokes, in the subtext. “I’ve been smiling so much and I’m not even happy,” she says about midway through. “I just got my teeth fixed.” Flashing radiant dental work, she says it was expensive in a pointed way that makes that joyful look on her face seem like a setup to this payoff.Joel Kim Booster, ‘Psychosexual’NetflixAfter saying he never hears queer women complaining about their inability to achieve orgasm, Joel Kim Booster abruptly silences a round of applause with a glare and a raise of a hand. “I will not let this descend into clapter,” he adds pointedly. For years, Booster — who between this special and his new Hulu movie, “Fire Island,” is having a moment — has brought a commanding club-comic energy to alt rooms: prickly, aggressive but clear premises that set up hard punch lines.His stylish and funny debut is broken into three acts, one that leans on his identity as a gay Korean American comic, the second that doesn’t and the third that focuses on sex. Throughout, he uses a straight white man in the crowd as a foil to examine questions of relatability and universality. He periodically talks directly into the camera to address the director about where to focus the camera, a fun tactic that evokes shows like “Fleabag.”His formal devices are clever and nicely integrated into the set — even if it builds to an argument that is ultimately pretty traditional. The strength here is his forcefully seductive presence, one that grasps that politics or sex are, among other things, powerful instruments to set up a punchline. After discussing the racism of Asian fetishes, he deadpans: “I think it’s doubly racist if you have an Asian fetish and are not attracted to me specifically.”Audio produced by More

    More stories

    • 88 Shares169 Views

      in Movies

      5 Smart Comedy Specials From Veteran Standups

      by

      Joel Kim Booster, Nikki Glaser, Bill Burr, Fahim Anwar and Cristela Alonzo deliver strong hours ideal for summer viewing.Why isn’t there a standup-special equivalent of a beach read? I wouldn’t recommend sunbathing with a smartphone in your hand, but it’s certainly possible. As more comics release their first specials developed in the pandemic, a new crop of hours from seasoned acts is ready to complement your summer vacation.Nikki Glaser, ‘Good Clean Filth’HBO MaxWearing thigh-high white boots and a short yellow dress, Nikki Glaser looks as much like a Bond girl as a standup. She’s not selling sex so much as teaching it, explicitly making the case for her own bawdy jokes filling the niche left by the pitiful job done by sex education and porn. Long adopting the persona of an older sister leveling with you, she moves closer to a modern comedy update on Dr. Ruth or even old-school women’s magazines, speaking prescriptively about everything from anal sex to how to get a man.A sly and skilled joke writer, she knows sex jokes get easy laughs, so she makes transgressive ones that look difficult to pull off. She scatters punch lines in a nimble voice that moves from gravelly deep to squeaky sweet. She delights in wordplay. Joking about her vagina, she says, “I talk about it so much that I don’t call it my privates. I call it my public.”And then there’s this gem on male rationalization for dating younger women. “There’s an epidemic of young people with old souls according to all my 40-year-old-friends.” Her hour can feel a little familiar, going over territory she has already mastered. On the other hand, there’s her closer, a silent act-out that works as a callback, an innovation and a big laugh.Bill Burr, ‘Live at Red Rocks’NetflixEarly in the pandemic, Bill Burr went on Joe Rogan’s podcast and got into it about masks. Rogan made fun of them as feminine and weak. “You’re so tough with your open nose and throat,” Burr snapped back, with an additional curse, pushing Rogan about turning a medical issue into something about manhood. “Why does it always become like that?”This viral moment revealed a divide between the two popular comics. On his podcast, Rogan sells a certain aspirational view of masculinity, while in his standup, Burr presents a more tortured portrait, giving anguished voice to male resentments and phobias as well as expression to their destructiveness. Along with one of the great deliveries in standup comedy, this complexity is what makes Burr a riveting performer.His messy, rambling, often hilarious new special baits the audience at every turn. Like Bruce Banner, Burr is worried about his temper, but it’s what we’ve come to see. And it can be the engine to some daring riffs that dig at both sides of the culture war, even though he’s more animated and funnier going after liberals. None of his many peers do this as well. No clichés about lattes and kale here. Describing a privileged white tweeter who’s virtue signaling, he imitates, typing out, “My heart breaks on my L-shaped couch.”Burr does repeat himself, and for the second special in a row, he speculates that they are running out of men to cancel. His bits are more intricately organized than his act. He closes on one that’s not as strong as the bit that came before. The emotional highlight sits awkwardly in the middle when he gets choked up describing the self-loathing of losing his temper in front of his daughter and finding that he is falling into the same mistakes that his father made. Bent down in a hunch, Burr is unexpectedly emotional, the bluster vanished and the rage transformed into tenderness. It’s a range that makes you think there’s a leading role in a great movie in his future.Fahim Anwar, ‘Hat Trick’YouTubeFahim Anwar filmed his special in three rooms at the Comedy Store.via YouTubeThe pun in the brisk, low-concept “Hat Trick,” in which the flamboyantly silly comic wears a backward cap while performing in three different rooms of the Comedy Store in Hollywood, is its only effortful part. Otherwise, the vibe is laid-back, offhanded, just another night at the club. You see introductions, shoptalk with comics and some of the drive home. In between are jokes on the most meat-and-potato standup subjects: dating, the pandemic, weed, porn.There’s something pleasingly comfortable about the style here, one that Anwar can pull off because he is one of the finest physical comedians working in clubs today. His act-outs rival Sebastian Maniscalco’s in grace and exceed them in goofiness, whether they are of a deer, a dancing emoji or a member of the Taliban using hand sanitizer. Each of these works nicely with the joke. The only risk is in seeming a little strained, which is why the underplayed style works so well. If you want a few laughs but don’t have time to get to the club, this will do.Cristela Alonzo, ‘Middle Classy’NetflixWhen Cristela Alonzo is telling a story, she has a specific if ambiguous look on her face that somehow generates suspense: a smiling kind of wonder that doubles as exasperation. It’s somewhere between “Can you believe this nonsense?” and “What a world.” You want to find out where she lands.It’s part of the fun of her first special in five years, whose highlights are sensitively observed jokes explaining the transition from growing up poor to finding some success. Keep an eye out for a virtuoso story about her first trip to the gynecologist. Her joyful comedy has a dark side, which shows around the edges of jokes, in the subtext. “I’ve been smiling so much and I’m not even happy,” she says about midway through. “I just got my teeth fixed.” Flashing radiant dental work, she says it was expensive in a pointed way that makes that joyful look on her face seem like a setup to this payoff.Joel Kim Booster, ‘Psychosexual’NetflixAfter saying he never hears queer women complaining about their inability to achieve orgasm, Joel Kim Booster abruptly silences a round of applause with a glare and a raise of a hand. “I will not let this descend into clapter,” he adds pointedly. For years, Booster — who between this special and his new Hulu movie, “Fire Island,” is having a moment — has brought a commanding club-comic energy to alt rooms: prickly, aggressive but clear premises that set up hard punch lines.His stylish and funny debut is broken into three acts, one that leans on his identity as a gay Korean American comic, the second that doesn’t and the third that focuses on sex. Throughout, he uses a straight white man in the crowd as a foil to examine questions of relatability and universality. He periodically talks directly into the camera to address the director about where to focus the camera, a fun tactic that evokes shows like “Fleabag.”His formal devices are clever and nicely integrated into the set — even if it builds to an argument that is ultimately pretty traditional. The strength here is his forcefully seductive presence, one that grasps that politics or sex are, among other things, powerful instruments to set up a punchline. After discussing the racism of Asian fetishes, he deadpans: “I think it’s doubly racist if you have an Asian fetish and are not attracted to me specifically.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in Movies

      For Joel Kim Booster, Making ‘Fire Island’ Was a Real Trip

      by

      The writer and star of “Fire Island” reflects on making the rare romantic comedy that puts gay Asian American men at its center.Joel Kim Booster had a thought: Why do we even need movie trailers? Sure, they give people a bite-size look at a film they might find intriguing, but couldn’t we just … not?This was the theory Booster advanced to me one evening in late April, just hours after the trailer was released for “Fire Island,” a gay romantic comedy he wrote and starred in. Booster had anticipated this moment with a not-inconsiderable level of anxiety, so he met the morning with a plan: After posting the trailer online, he would go back to bed, then keep himself distracted with a trip to the gym and several palliative episodes of “Real Housewives.”A few hours into this plan, as his phone blew up with text messages and Twitter began to pick the trailer apart, he texted the “Fire Island” director Andrew Ahn to announce that he was having either a heart attack or a series of mini-strokes.So consider this his mea culpa: “I’ve done it, too — I’ve made massive judgments about a movie based on two minutes,” said Booster, who is 34, bleached-blond and possessed of a voice so NPR-smooth that a microphone almost seems superfluous. “But now, being on the other side of it, I’m just like, ‘Well, that’s the most ridiculous thing in the world!’”A modern, same-sex gloss on “Pride and Prejudice” by Jane Austen, “Fire Island” (streaming on Hulu) stars Booster as our narrator Noah, who makes knowing observations about the titular gay enclave and its social mores. (Think of him as Elizabeth Bennet in a pink Speedo.) Noah didn’t come to Fire Island to look for true love, but as he attends to his insecure friend Howie (Bowen Yang) during their vacation gone wrong, he also takes the measure of a stiff and arrogant suitor who just may be his Mr. Darcy.After Booster was done dodging internet comments and replying to his friends’ texts about the trailer, he met me at Akbar, a storied Los Angeles gay bar with amber lighting, strong cocktails and kitschy, beaded bamboo curtains. (Booster, who moved here from New York a few years ago, picked Akbar because it was one of the few gay bars in town “that didn’t feel like WeHo or a Chipotle.”) We were joined by Ahn, who initially drew Booster’s attention after directing the 2016 indie “Spa Night.” They met years ago and bonded over being gay and Korean in an industry that rarely makes room for their stories.From left, Torian Miller, Bowen Yang, Margaret Cho, Tomás Matos and Booster in “Fire Island.”Jeong Park/Searchlight Pictures“We were supposed to split up and do our own things so that we’d take the burden off each other,” Booster said as Ahn chuckled into his tequila soda. “But then we decided to do one project together that now has the same problem of having to represent everybody.”Though there have recently been more gay rom-coms from big studios than ever before, that’s not exactly saying much: They still come around as rarely as comets, and none of the other ones — not “Love Simon,” “Happiest Season,” or this year’s forthcoming Billy Eichner vehicle “Bros” — have a leading cast that is comprised mainly of Asian American actors. So there’s an extra layer of scrutiny that Booster expects from people who’ve never seen themselves in a film protagonist before.And he totally gets that, but it’s all superseded by the fact that he’s the protagonist in question, and he can never be all things to all people because his own story is so specific. Booster was adopted as an infant and home-schooled by white parents in Plainfield, Ill., before he came out as a teenager, studied musical theater in college and moved to New York to become a stand-up comedian. Even now, his conservative family is barely aware that their son is making gay rom-coms that the entire internet is determined to weigh in on.So you’ll have to excuse Booster if he can’t take on everybody else’s concerns right now — not when he’s still got plenty of his own to grapple with.“The night before we started shooting, I was like, ‘This is either going to change my life or it’s going to be the biggest flop of my career,’” Booster told me. “And I don’t think there will be anything in between that.”THE FIRST TIME that Booster and Yang went to Fire Island, it was with a certain amount of trepidation. In those days, both men were still clinging to their day jobs (Booster was the project manager for an internet sock company), and to make the trip economically feasible, they fit 11 impoverished friends into a house with three bedrooms. They knew that the island had a reputation as a haven for rich, white gay men with muscles, but it still unnerved Booster when someone would fix him with a hard stare that all but declared, “You don’t belong here.”Still, the more time he spent with his friends on Fire Island, the freer he felt. “You don’t realize the weight you carry every day by just walking around in straight spaces,” he said. And even the peculiar prejudices of the island became grist for the mill once Booster read Austen’s novel and realized that her story of social stratification would map neatly onto his own experiences.Over the next few years, while Booster’s star began to rise as a stand-up comedian, he kept going back to Fire Island and plugging away at a script about the place that would star him and Yang. And in early 2020, Booster’s breakthrough finally arrived when the project was greenlit … by Quibi.Booster with the director of “Fire Island,” Andrew Ahn, at Akbar.Michael Tyrone Delaney for The New York TimesDon’t laugh. Yes, Jeffrey Katzenberg’s short-form streaming app has since become one of Hollywood’s most infamous flameouts, but at the time, Booster was all-in. Every other studio had passed on “Fire Island,” and Booster’s other big break — a supporting role on NBC’s 2019 sitcom “Sunnyside” — had capsized, leaving his career in a precarious place: “People were like, ‘It’s going to be huge, it’s the next “Office,” you’re going to be able to buy a house with the residuals once it gets to five seasons.’ And then we were canceled after three episodes.”Quibi didn’t last much longer. The app launched one month into the pandemic, tumbled out of the most-downloaded charts within a week, and was sold for parts to Roku by the fall. “Going into lockdown, everyone was depressed, but I felt like my career was kaput,” said Booster. “I was like, ‘Oh, this is done. By the time this is all over, people will have forgotten about me completely.’”Luckily, Searchlight Pictures began to sniff around the project, provided that Booster could rewrite it as a feature film. And that’s when Ahn got into the ring.“I don’t think I’m patting myself on the back by saying, yeah, I think I’m the only person that could have directed this,” Ahn told me. For the last decade, he has lived in what he calls “a gay Asian flophouse in Echo Park” — a building with cheap rent, no central air, plenty of party-throwing camaraderie and an invader opossum that took an entire month to capture. Ahn felt so well-suited for “Fire Island” that he could have been a character from it; in fact, for the movie’s mood board, he used images of himself and his friends.Ahn was thrilled as the movie became even more Asian during the casting process: When a male actor dropped out, the comedian Margaret Cho came aboard as the characters’ destitute den mother, and Booster’s love interest, originally written for a non-Asian person of color, went to the Filipino American actor Conrad Ricamora. (“In the chemistry read, Conrad flustered Joel, and I loved seeing that,” Ahn said.) Though Booster happily signed off on both castings, he still had some reservations.“It became suddenly not only a gay movie, but an Asian gay movie,” Booster said as we finished our drinks and set out for another bar. “It felt heavier, the responsibility of it.”Still, he knows these sorts of opportunities are few and far between. Booster was crestfallen when he didn’t land the key role of Michelle Yeoh’s gay child in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” which ultimately went to the actress Stephanie Hsu: “I went in for it and there was just me and a million girls, and I was like, ‘What is going on?’” he said.Sometimes, Booster even feels like he has to justify being cast in his own movie. As we arrived at the Eagle — a leather bar boasting pinball machines, a pool table covered in red felt and TV sets playing vintage porn — Booster talked about the internet commenters who pronounced him too gym-fit to be plausible as a Fire Island outsider. “I think people are really naïve about how awful gay men can be sometimes,” he said, nursing a beer.“I think there’s a lot of nuance in the fact that, yes, I experience gay racism, but I also look like this,” Booster continued. “I’m aware that I’ve done a lot of work to try and make myself visible in those spaces, and I’ve taken a very conventional way of trying to do that. But also, I had to feel good about myself before I started to do all of this — it wasn’t reverse engineered. The first time I sold a script, I was like, ‘Oh, I have so much more value than just if some rando thinks I’m sexually viable or not.’”And ultimately, you can’t control what those randos think of you, whether they’re anonymous internet commenters or strangers who pass judgment in person. Ahn recounted a story of shooting the movie on the Fire Island boardwalk when two gay men walked by and noticed Booster standing there. “Oh, that’s the lead of the movie,” one said.“Him?” said his friend.Booster, right, with Conrad Ricamora in “Fire Island.”Jeong Park/Searchlight PicturesAhn was indignant, but as he told the story, Booster just nodded. “As a comedian, with everything I’ve done up to this point, I’m just supposed to be funny, you know?” Booster said. “But with this, I’m supposed to be a romantic lead, and it’s a lot for me in my life to be confronted with that and be like, ‘Am I that guy? Is this believable?’”Booster had never been in a relationship before he started writing “Fire Island,” and everything he knew about love, he had learned from watching Nora Ephron movies. But as “Fire Island” headed into production, Booster met the video-game producer John-Michael Kelly, and something in him softened.“I’ve just never met somebody that has made me want to not be alone until I met him,” Booster said.He began to rewrite the scenes he shared with Ricamora, pulling from actual conversations he’d had with Kelly. And the film’s final beat between the characters, which initially culminated in a flippant joke, was tweaked to land on something sweeter and more romantic. “It was like I was doing drag when I first wrote the movie about love,” Booster said, “and then after experiencing it and doing the rewrites, it felt much more real and lived in.”The movie has been earning stellar reviews, which has Booster breathing a sigh of relief: “When I was making it,” he said, “I thought, ‘If this movie is bad, I can never show my face here again. I just ruined my favorite place in the world.’” And yes, he and Yang both plan to go back to the island this summer.“Do you think it’s going to be different?” Ahn asked. “Do you think it’s going to be weird?”“It’s going to be extremely weird,” Booster said. “I’ll either be persona non grata or the mayor.”And what will it feel like when Booster goes from “He’s the lead of ‘Fire Island’?” to “He’s the lead of ‘Fire Island’!”Booster just shrugged: He’ll know when he knows. “I don’t think it’s hit me quite yet,” he said. “I’m not getting Grindr messages about it.” More

    • 88 Shares149 Views

      in Movies

      ‘Fire Island’ Review: Oh, the Summer Nights

      by

      The quips are almost as hot as the sexual tension in Andrew Ahn and Joel Kim Booster’s loosely paced but endearing romantic comedy.The fairly banal title, which refers to the famously hedonistic New York gay haven, reflects the degree of originality deployed by Andrew Ahn’s “Fire Island.” This, after all, is a rom-com that deploys not one but three genre staples — a party game (here a session of Heads Up!), a karaoke outing (Britney, naturally) and a dance scene — and where every plot development feels preordained.Yet it’s also impossible to resist a movie that uses “Legally Blonde” as a verb and in which two men adorably bond over Alice Munro short stories. Noah (Joel Kim Booster, who also wrote the screenplay and has a Netflix special due June 21) and his similarly underfunded buddies have descended on the Pines for a last week of summer fun before their host (Margaret Cho) sells her house. Noah is busy playing wingman for his friend Howie (“SNL” cast member Bowen Yang), a hopeless romantic who fears he will never find a boyfriend, while himself steering clear of emotional attachments — until he develops a suspiciously intense antipathy for the uptight, taciturn lawyer Will (the fetching Conrad Ricamora, from “How to Get Away With Murder”).The movie lightly recasts Jane Austen tropes, with Noah as the reluctant anchor of friends fumbling to form attachments beyond their own cozy circle, while the social commentary is updated to barbs at Fire Island’s racial, financial and sexual stratification. The pace is slacker than it should be, but still, “Fire Island” fits neatly alongside Kristen Stewart’s lesbian Christmas movie “Happiest Season” on Hulu’s rom-com shelf.Fire IslandRated R for sexual shenanigans. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Hulu. More